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This article argues that the position of political violence in developing countries has changed in the post-Cold War period, from being seen (by some) as a legitimate response to dictatorship to become associated with criminality and delinquency on the one hand and terrorism on the other. This provides a new context for 'identity politics', the definition of which has tended to become narrower and in practice more restrictive, leading to a hardening of 'community' boundaries. Taking the Maoist insurgency in Peru as a case study, the article enquires how identity, violence and security have been lived and understood by people in the Andean region. At the centre is an emblematic narrative of an indigenous schoolteacher who explores connections between his experiences of Peru's agrarian and e

AbstractUsing accounts by militant schoolteachers from a province in the central sierra of Peru, this article attempts to show how and why concepts of race and political commitment among teachers changed at three critical moments in Peruvian history: agrarian reform, mass unionisation, and Maoist insurgency. The article explores how binary representations of race as mestizo or Indian, mestizo or cholo, were both formed and challenged by the everyday experience of teachers as well as their political action. Their reactions to, and negotiation of, racial ascription are framed within three fields of power: racialised social identities, processes of state formation, and opportunities and repertoire of contestatory politics.