Angélica Mendoza de Ascarza

Kidnapping and execution of Arquímedes Mendoza Communist propaganda poster portraying Abimael Guzmán, holding the red flag, leads the Communist Party of Peru.

On 17 May 1980, a militant group called the Shining Path, the Communist Party of Peru, began its guerrilla war against the Peruvian government by burning ballot boxes in Chuschi, Ayacucho. The most intense, extensive and bloody conflict in the history of Peru began shortly in the highlands of Ayacucho. In 1982, the Peruvian Army assumed the government of Ayacucho and from 1983 to 1985 began brutal reprisals against the people of Ayacucho for guerrilla killings.

On 12 July 1983 at 00:00 hours, Mendoza's 19-year-old son Arquímedes was taken into the custody of the Peruvian military and State Police on suspicion of being a communist sympathizer. Soldiers and police stormed the 54 year old Mendoza's residence and threatened Mendoza's family with death and destruction of property. Mendoza sustained physical attack as she attempted to prevent the abduction of her son. In subsequent statements to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR), Estanislao described the men who stormed the Mendoza residence and seized their son:

Loaded into a truck with other detainees, Arquímedes was taken to the Los Cabitos Barracks in Ayacucho where the military tortured and executed detained persons. According to later testimony to the CVR at a public hearing in Ayacucho, one of the soldiers that kidnapped Arquímedes told Mendoza that she could visit the Los Cabitos Barracks the next day to retrieve her son and that they were merely taking statements from their detainees as "witnesses." When she did visit the barracks the next day, Mendoza was told by soldiers that the prisoners had been moved out of the barracks to an undisclosed location. Desperate, Mendoza took to the streets to look for her son in Ayacucho as well as many neighboring towns and villages like Huanta and Huamanga without aid from the military, local government, or local churches. The only contact Mendoza would ever again have with her son was a note asking Mendoza to find a lawyer to attempt to get Arquímedes out of imprisonment. His remains were never discovered. Later that year, the ANFASEP successfully mounted its first march from the Plaza of Arms in Ayacucho, of which Nobel Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel took part. Marchers carried images of missing persons, wooden crosses, and signs,

Later work As the Peruvian Civil War calmed, there were still thousands of dead and missing persons that their families still looked for. Provisional President Valentín Paniagua created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru to meet the demands of the people but ultimately was unable to because of the stalling of his bureaucracy. Mendoza continued to head the ANFASEP, remaining active in it until her death.

In June 2012, Mendoza was awarded the People's Defender award by the Peruvian ombudsman in recognition of promotion and defense of human rights in the Republic of Peru.

Illness and death In 2016, relatives of Mendoza reported that she was in a very poor state of health as a result of a diabetic ketoacidosis and, as a result of the extreme pain caused by her condition, could not stand and had to remain in bed. Mendoza's funeral was held in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Mary, Ayacucho, an institution that had previously refused to recognize her or her work.