Born in Lima and raised in the Peruvian highland region of Ayacucho, Renzo Aroni is a historian
of modern Latin America. He received his Ph.D. in History with two Designated Emphases,
Human Rights and Native American Studies, from the University of California, Davis, in 2020. He
has an M.A. in Anthropology, with a focus on Ethnomusicology, from the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City. His research experience and current interest
includes social movements, revolutions, indigenous peoples, and human rights in Latin America,
particularly at their intersection with culture, memory, and political violence.
Aroni’s book manuscript-in-progress examines Peru’s internal armed conflict (1980–1992)
between Maoist Shining Path insurgents and government forces from a micro-dynamic of
wartime violence and resistance in the Andean village of Huamanquiquia (Ayacucho). It
analyzes the circumstances in which indigenous peasants switched their support from
insurgency to counter-insurgency and organized a broad multi-communal coalition, called the
Pacto de Alianza entre Pueblos, against the Shining Path. The Shining Path’s response to this
coalition included the massacre of eighteen indigenous men and the braid-cutting of seventeen
women in Huamanquiquia, just before the arrest of its highest leaders in 1992. Drawing on his
own experience amid the conflict, Aroni combines original archival research, including libro de
actas (community record books) and national counter-terrorism documents, with multi-sited
ethnographic study and oral histories primarily in Quechua with both indigenous and guerrilla
militants. His research has received support from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC)
and the UC Davis Provost’s Dissertation-Year Fellowship. His writings have appeared in journals
such as Latin American Perspectives, in Peruvian media, and as book chapters in Spanish and
English.
Born in Lima and raised in the Peruvian highland region of Ayacucho, Renzo Aroni is a historian
of modern Latin America. He received his Ph.D. in History with two Designated Emphases,
Human Rights and Native American Studies, from the University of California, Davis, in 2020. He
has an M.A. in Anthropology, with a focus on Ethnomusicology, from the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City. His research experience and current interest
includes social movements, revolutions, indigenous peoples, and human rights in Latin America,
particularly at their intersection with culture, memory, and political violence.
Aroni’s book manuscript-in-progress examines Peru’s internal armed conflict (1980–1992)
between Maoist Shining Path insurgents and government forces from a micro-dynamic of
wartime violence and resistance in the Andean village of Huamanquiquia (Ayacucho). It
analyzes the circumstances in which indigenous peasants switched their support from
insurgency to counter-insurgency and organized a broad multi-communal coalition, called the
Pacto de Alianza entre Pueblos, against the Shining Path. The Shining Path’s response to this
coalition included the massacre of eighteen indigenous men and the braid-cutting of seventeen
women in Huamanquiquia, just before the arrest of its highest leaders in 1992. Drawing on his
own experience amid the conflict, Aroni combines original archival research, including libro de
actas (community record books) and national counter-terrorism documents, with multi-sited
ethnographic study and oral histories primarily in Quechua with both indigenous and guerrilla
militants. His research has received support from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC)
and the UC Davis Provost’s Dissertation-Year Fellowship. His writings have appeared in journals
such as Latin American Perspectives, in Peruvian media, and as book chapters in Spanish and
English.
