This talk uses primarily oral history interviews with former Maoist rebels and Indigenous survivors to examine how the Shining Path punished women by cutting off their hair and what this action means for the aggressors and their victims surrounding the 1992 massacre in the Andean community of Huamanquiquia. Forcibly cutting women’s hair is often understood as an act of punishment, oppression, and public humiliation because of their gender, social status, or religious beliefs. However, the haircutting incident discussed here offers a further intricate account and implications for the insurgents and the community members. Interviews with former rebels display their contradictions about their actions and responsibilities. Some denied punishing women by cutting their hair; others admitted it, justifying that they deserved it for their liaisons with the enemy. Eventually, the rebels mitigated their action, reasoning that hair grows back, and these women carried on with their lives. While this action means sanctioning and dishonoring women for the rebels, it has a different understanding for their victims. I argue that forced haircutting was more than just a humiliating punishment for women. According to the Andean people’s worldview, cutting off women’s hair entails a crime against the human body-soul integrity, provoking endless suffering in the afterlife journey. From this perspective, forced haircutting means for Quechua-speaking women mutilation of their physical body with psychological, moral, social, and gender consequences on their lives, which extended to their children.

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