From 1939 to 1946, Guzmán lived with his mother's family. After 1947 he lived with his father and his father's wife in the city of Arequipa, where he studied at Colegio De La Salle, a private Catholic secondary school. At the age of 19, he became a student at the Social Studies department of San Agustín National University, in Arequipa. His classmates at the university later described him as shy, disciplined, obsessive, and ascetic. Increasingly attracted by Marxism, his political thinking was influenced by the book "Seven Essays on the Interpretation of the Peruvian Reality" of José Carlos Mariátegui, the founder of the Peruvian Communist Party.