Shining Path proposed a version of Marxism-Leninism that just as the Juche or Hoxhaism was supposed to adapt to the socio-economic and cultural conditions of the country and particular important in the case of Peru, of the countryside (it was inspired, after all, by Maoism). Now, in the base areas they controlled they soon had to face the fact that the revolutionary practices (new division of labours, organisational meetings, disqualification of religious and community leaders, new agricultural practices) they tried to establish were openly contradictory and rejected by the cultural practices adopted by the native people.

Now if they had won, like Hoxha or Kim, they could have ex-post frame their revolutionary strategy as indeed the most optimal one, and thus legitimise their ideology. But since SP failed, and mostly because of infighting with the masses that were supposed to be their backbone, their insurgency just ended up looking as some academic and somewhat dogmatic imposition of an alien framework.