The terruqueo is a negative campaigning and often racist method of fearmongering used in Peru that involves describing anti-Fujimorists, left-wing political opponents and those who are against the neoliberal status quo as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, with the tactic primarily being used by right-wing parties and Fujimorists to create a culture of fear. United Nations experts have condemned the use of the terruqueo, describing it as an intimidation tactic used by the government.

The term terruqueo is the verbification of the word terruco which derived from the word terrorista, or "terrorist" in English, a neologism which originated from individuals in Ayacucho describing Shining Path guerrillas during the internal conflict in Peru. Historian Carlos Aguire said that the -uco replaced the ending of the word terrorista by Quechua speakers since they typically terminate words with -uco.

Since the 1980s, the word terruco has been carelessly used by right-wing politicians in Peru to target left-wing, progressive and indigenous groups, with this baseless and often racist attack being called a terruqueo.

Since the 1930s, the political elite of Peru used fear mongering tactics to influence the public by targeting foreign communist movements according to historian Antonio Zapata of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, beginning with Joseph Stalin and later with Fidel Castro. Terruqueos began to appear during the 1980s and would occur throughout Peru's internal conflict. The basis of the terruqueo began during the presidency of Fernando Belaúnde when Legislative Decree 46 broadly defined terrorism as "any form of glorification or defense of the political discourse of subversive organizations".

Into the 1990s, authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori utilized terruqueos with the help of the National Intelligence Service to discredit those who opposed him, including dissenters from his own government, with political scientist Daniel Encinas saying that this would evolve into conservative politicians using the attack to target those opposed to Fujimori's neoliberal economic policies and that the right-wing used the terruqueo as a "strategy of manipulating the legacy of political violence". Following the 1992 Peruvian self-coup, Fujimori would broaden the definition of terrorism in an effort to criminalize as many actions possible to persecute left-wing political opponents. The Fujimori government threatened activists and critics of the Peruvian Armed Forces with life imprisonment, describing such groups as the "legal arm" of terrorist groups. Ultimately, a culture of fear was created by Fujimori, with individuals fearing that they would be described as a terrorist.

Discussing Fujimori's actions, Fernando Velásquez Villalba states:

[T]he figure of the terrorist was presented as the personification of evil. [...]The harshness of Fujimori's anti-terrorist legislation places the terrorist as the most dangerous enemy for society and the state. [...] In other words, a terrorist, no matter how long he fulfills his sentence, will never cease to be a terrorist. The enemy will always be the enemy and, therefore, if the terrorist is still alive, the era of terrorism, at least in some memories, is a latent fear and can therefore be repeated. [...] In addition to being slanderous, the ''terruqueo'' has served to awaken deep memories and fears of internal armed conflict. In addition, the ''terruqueo'' undermines the attempts of social organizations to create any form of opposition against the hegemonic elites. Thus, the ''terruqueo'' is, mainly, an attempt to control and monopolize political legitimacy, resorting to memories of the recent past. The fear of a repetition of the painful past is powerful enough to manipulate public opinion and criticize the various social protests.

Thus, using the terruqueo, according to Velásquez Villalba, Fujimori made himself a "permanent hero" and made left-wing ideologies an eternal enemy within Peru.