Please find attached a few documents that provide information on the requested subject.

Please note that these documents refer to the organization of armed civilian groups in areas affected by the Sendero Luminoso insurgency. The term rondas or rondas campesinas originally referred only to the self-defense groups formed by rural communities, mostly in Cajamarca and neighbouring areas, before the 1980s to stop cattle-rustling and banditry and provide the police protection the communities lacked. A 1987 Americas Watch report points this out, describing the rondas campesinas organized in the 1980s as civil defense patrols and indicating the following:
These civil defense patrols have often been referred to as rondas campesinas, which has caused them to be confused with the autonomous, grass roots organizations formed by peasants mostly in northern Peru which are known by the same name (Americas Watch 1987, 8).

Sendero Luminoso has recently increased its attacks against the rondas campesinas and the villages that organize them, while the current government of Peru has recently began issuing firearms to some rondas in order to upgrade their fighting capability (see attached documents). Please refer in your Regional Documentation Centre to the IRBDC's Weekly Media Review and the more recent Indexed Media Review for recent articles on this subject.

Information on the subject can also be found in the attached pages of the book Sendero Luminoso and the Threat of Narcoterrorism by Gabriela Tarazona-Sevillano (Praeger 1990), pages 94-98. The book describes the rondas campesinas as follows:
Peasant patrols (rondas campesinas) are an indigenous method of self-defense used by rural communities in the Andean highlands. During the late 1970s, the system was revived in the northern Andean department of Cajamarca. Residents of the town of Cuyumalco spontaneously organized a team of local men to protect their livestock and property against thieves because the area's police were notoriously ineffective. This problem was not unique to Cuyumalco, and the idea soon spread to other regions of the department. Small towns banded together and formed common peasant patrols to police their territories (Tarazona-Sevillano 1990, 94).

The report adds that the idea of peasant patrols then spread to the neighbouring department of Piura and, during the counter-insurgency campaign in the South-Central Andes of Peru, the political-military command of the emergency zones decided to establish a similar system of peasant patrols to stem Sendero Luminoso attacks. The command proceeded to move and place together entire villages, in the idea that this would provide them with stronger patrols and make them easier to protect (Ibid., 95). In practice, however, the system joined some communities that had long-standing rivalries and had their members fighting amongst themselves (Ibid., 95-96). Some of the participating communities have endured psychological and economic stress, violent attacks by Sendero Luminoso and, with the male population reportedly dwindling, women and children have been required to serve in the peasant patrols (Ibid., 96-97).

One of the attached documents, a report by the Andean
Commission of Jurists, describes the peasant patrols as a complex phenomenon, providing examples of failures and successes of the system (Andean Newsletter Jan. 1992, 5). In some cases the patrols have successfully resisted attacks by Sendero Luminoso, while in others they have committed serious abuses themselves. Discussing the case of patrols in the Mantaro region, the report adds the following:
[T]he patrols have not been formed solely because of pressures placed on them by the armed forces. In some cases, they have even had to fight to win the army's trust and to convince the government to give them shotguns. A patrol leader from Tulumayo, Junin, explained, for example, that after his community decided to rise up against Sendero, 530 peasants died in combat because they did not have weapons. They now have been given 450 rifles and 12 trucks (Ibid.).

Finally, the Andean Commission of Jurists report of January 1992 states that the peasant patrols are, or had been until then, legally under the supervision of the armed forces while the government made a decision on proposed bills intended to regulate their supervision (Ibid., 6).

Americas Watch. 1987. A Certain Passivity: Failing to Curb Human Rights Abuses in Peru. Washington, D.C./New York: Americas Watch.

Andean Newsletter [Lima]. January 1992. "Risks of Arming Peasant Patrols."

Tarazona-Sevillano, Gabriela. 1990. Sendero Luminoso and the Threat of Narcoterrorism. New York/London/Washington, D.C.: Praeger and The Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Americas Watch. 1990. In Desperate Straits: Human Rights in Peruvian After a Decade of Democracy and Insurgency. Washington, D.C./New York: Americas Watch, pp. 83-89.

_____. 1986. Human Rights in Peru After President Garcia's First Year. Washington, D.C./New York: Americas Watch, pp. 23-30.

Andean Newsletter [Lima]. January 1992. "Risks of Arming Peasant Patrols."

Tarazona-Sevillano, Gabriela. 1990. Sendero Luminoso and the Threat of Narcoterrorism. New York/London/Washington, D.C.: Praeger and The Center for Strategic and International Studies, pp. 94-98.