Shining Path
Shining Path was founded in the late 1960s by former university professor Abimael GuzmÃÂán under the alias Presidente Gonzalo ("Chairman" or "President" Gonzalo), whose teachings created the foundation of its militant Maoist doctrine. It was an offshoot of the Communist Party of Peru – Bandera Roja ("red flag"), which in turn split from the mainline Communist Party of Peru in 1964. When Peru's military government allowed elections for the first time in a dozen years in 1980, Shining Path was one of the few insurrectionary groups which declined to take part, instead launching a guerrilla war by attacking election booths in the highlands of the province of Ayacucho.
Throughout the 1980s, Shining Path grew in both the territory it controlled and the number of militants in its organization. By 1991, it had control of much of the countryside of the center and south of Peru and had a large presence in the outskirts of Lima, Peru's capital city, where it mounted attacks against civilians and the infrastructure.
In combatting Shining Path, the Peruvian armed forces committed many atrocities. Government forces destroyed villages and massacred campesinos suspected of being supporters of Shining Path. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission established by President Alejandro Toledo found in a 2003 report that over 69,000 people had died during the civil war, at the hands of the rebels and the state. According to a summary of the report by Human Rights Watch, "Shining Path ... killed about half the victims, and roughly one-third died at the hands of government security forces... The commission attributed some of the other slayings to a smaller guerrilla group and local militias. The rest remain unattributed." [1] The other major Peruvian guerrilla group during this period, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), was held responsible for only 1.5% of the deaths. [1]
Although the extent of Shining Path atrocities and the reliability of reports remains a matter of controversy, the senderistas have been frequently accused of notably brutal methods of killing and of targeting leadership of other leftist groups for assassination, including "local leaders of political parties, labor unions and peasant organizations, many of whom were anti-Sendero Marxists." A typical report of Shining Path atrocity can be found in The Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1988: "The insurgents hung the women on a wall and hacked them with knives and machetes before slitting their throats, police said." [1]
On September 12, 1992, GuzmÃÂán was captured by Peruvian special forces; shortly thereafter the rest of Shining Path's leadership fell as well. At the same time, Shining Path suffered embarrassing military defeats to campesino self-defense organizations — supposedly its social base — and the organization fractured into splinter groups. Guerrilla activity diminished sharply thereafter, with peace returning to many of the areas where Shining Path had been most active.
Although Shining Path has virtually disappeared in much of Peru, a militant faction known as Proseguir (or "Onward") continues to be sporadically active in the region of the Ene and Apurimac valleys on the eastern slopes of the Andes, some 300 miles southeast of Lima. It is believed that the faction consists of three companies known as the North, or Pangoa, the Centre, or Pucuta, and the South, or Vizcatan. According to the Peruvian government, the faction consists of around 100 hardliners from other (now disbanded) regional Shining Path units. The government claims that Proseguir is operating in alliance with drug traffickers.
The Proseguir faction has been blamed for an upsurge in guerrilla activity in the region during 2003. Government forces have had a number of successes in capturing its leading members. In April 2000, commander JosÃÂé Arcela Chiroque, a.k.a. "Ormeno", was captured, followed by another leader, Florentino Cerrón Cardozo, a.k.a. "Marcelo" in July 2003. In November of the same year, Jaime Zuniga, also known as "Cirilo" or "Dalton," was arrested after a clash in which four guerrillas were killed and an officer wounded. Officials said he took part in planning the kidnapping in June of 71 workers of the Argentine company Techint, who were working on a gas pipeline in the jungle. He was also thought to have led an ambush against an army helicopter in 1999 in which five soldiers died.
A man known as Artemio and identifying himself as one of the last free Shining Path leaders gave a media interview in April of 2004, where he stated that the group will resume violent operations unless the Peruvian government grants an amnesty to other top Shining Path leaders within 60 days. Peru's Interior Minister, Fernando Rospigliosi, said that the government would respond "drastically and swiftly" to any violent action.
In addition to fighting the Peruvian government, Shining Path also engaged in armed conflicts with Peru's other major Peruvian guerrilla group, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), with campesino self-defense groups organized by the Peruvian armed forces, and with legally-recognized parties of the Peruvian Left.
Internationally, Shining Path is widely regarded as a terrorist group. The organization is on the United States Department of State's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, meaning (among other things) that it is illegal for US citizens to provide any aid to the group. The United Kingdom and European Union likewise list Shining Path as a terrorist group and prohibit providing funding or other financial support, although membership is not prohibited.
Shining Path's ideology and tactics have been copied by other Marxist guerrilla groups, notably the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) in Nepal.
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