Poverty, fanaticism, lack of institutional representation, or frustraited expectations among peasants are some of the principal explanations scholars have offered for the civil war. After a close examination of the events that unfolded in highland regions of Peru after the reform, I have come to think that theses explanations are too simple. This book argues instead that the mechanisms that combined to usher in one of the most violent periods of Peru´s history are inextricably bound up with the 1969 reform and the peculiar ways in which it restrucutured political space. The reform affored some peasants the opportunity to seize greater local power, while opening the doors for a number of other contenders to vie for control of that same space. The following pages seek to explain how political life in the countryside changed during and after the reform and why these changes contributed to the ability of Sendero Lumiso to establish a foothold, specifically in rural areas. Rather than reducing these changes and their consequences to a matter of failed modernanization policies, I trace the often-contradictory ways in which the state´s policies led to its own growing fragility and fragmentation.