Búfalos ('The Buffaloes') is the name attributed to paramilitary squads connected to the APRA Party in Peru, originating in the 1930s.
[5] In the discourse of APRA chief Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, búfalos would be responsible for crowd control during mass rallies.
[10] As the APRA party came under attack from the military, búfalos conducted counter-attacks (including the high-profile assassination of Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro in 1933).
[3] When Alan García took over as APRA general secretary in 1982, he began curbing búfalo activities in a move to clean up the image of the party.
[16][17] It has also been argued that the búfalo experience of 1930-1948 provided the 1980s Sendero Luminoso guerrilla movement with an endogenous model for 'People's War' in Peru.