Because of its remote location, far away from the centre of Lima, the fact that most of its students hailed from the impoverished interior of the country, and that most of them intended to enter the highly politicised teaching profession, La Cantuta gained a reputation as hotbed of radical politics as early as the late 1950s and early 1960s. A series of student-led protest actions on the campus — including the blocking of the railway line linking Lima with the interior of the country — that led to the suspension of its activities in 1977.