The ideology adopted by Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in Peru before the 1980s contributed to attracting thousands of fighters and sympathizers, within the circles of that Latin American society, which seemed fragile at the time as a result of the great social and economic gaps between classes. However, the success of the special units of the National Police in carrying out a stringent security operation by arresting the head of the organization and its founder, Dr. Abimael Guzman along with a number of his aides on September 12, 1992, had a great impact on the lost legendary stature of the rebel organization, ending up dividing and fragmenting, then collapsing and disappearing.
Undoubtedly, the crimes carried out by the Shining Path, beginning in the 1980s, made it the largest and most violent leftist revolutionary organization in Peru. It committed many heinous terrorist operations that killed about 70,000 innocent citizens. This bloody approach adopted by these insurgents to serve their interests and achieve their plots, helped over time to deepen the ideological gap between them and those targeted by polarization of the peasants and those marginalized within that Latin American society.
After all, and before delving into the overall causes and consequences of this collapse, this article highlights the beginnings of this organization, which emerged as a simple university group that later turned into a brutal military force capable of besieging the capital, Lima, with terrorist acts, and cut off supplies after its incursion and control of many important strategic areas.
From the University to the Mountains
The causes of the emergence and expansion of armed terrorist organizations in any society are very similar, and are related in one way or another to the extent of internal stability at all levels. Thus, the success of the Shining Path and its ability to mobilize militarily among some segments of the society during the 1960s and 1970s can be traced to some factors, such as social and economic inequality in Latin American societies, not least those with a strong peasant and indigenous component, subordinated to a white minority that owns the local natural resources and wealth.
What has made the situation in many Latin American countries more fragile is the hegemony of regimes that are not grounded in clear foundations and rules for true democracy that ensure the peaceful transfer of power, maintain the country's capacities and wealth, and give the peoples the sovereign right to choose. Therefore, these reasons, along with others, prompted many Latino youths to follow the example of the revolution that broke out in Cuba in the 1950s. This generation, including Dr. Abimael Guzman, took the Cuban experience as an example to be followed in the military revolutionary struggle as a socialist project that represents a solution to the suffering of society.
The history of the Shining Path organization has been linked to the life of its founder, Dr. Abimael Guzman, the godfather who became the Fourth Sword of Communism in the eyes of his followers. This positioned him as a legendary thinker who lived up to Marx, Lenin and Mao. It further resulted in an organizational doctrine based on his personality, whose experiences appealed to an entire generation of Latin Americans who chose armed military struggle as a political action that fulfilled their aspirations and ambitions. The Shining Path, thus, emerged from the National University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga, where Guzman graduated, and was also appointed professor of philosophy and head of faculty members. He developed his political activity and struggle in the Peruvian Communist Red Flag party, an offshoot of the original Communist Party.
Dr. Guzman was greatly influenced by Mao's Cultural Revolution (in the mid-sixties) after a long stay with his wife in China. Having returned to Peru, a major political dispute erupted between him and prominent leaders of his Red Flag party. He then created his own communist space which he called Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in honor of José Carlos Mariátegui, founder of the Peruvian Socialist Party, who said: “Marxism-Leninism will open the shining path to the revolution".
Guzman took advantage of his position as head of the teaching staff and united with many professors and students who believe in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Then he began to expand to other universities with the winning of his followers of the chairmanship of student and academic councils. The organization disappeared from the scene in the mid-seventies, and went underground, disappearing deep in the mountains of the Peruvian Andes, where seeds of the extremist ideologies of the Shining Path began growing. It secretly instilled its extremist and military ideology among peasants dissatisfied with the gap between social classes.
Growing Terrorism
The armed activity of the Shining Path operatives was first manifested to the public on May 17, 1980, when they burned the ballot boxes on the eve of the first presidential elections after 12 years of military rule. This was followed by other violent operations aimed at gaining the sympathy of the peasants by seizing the powers of the central government. The organization robbed them of the authority of the “judiciary" in several areas by carrying out “popular trials" against people repudiated by the peasants, like cattle thieves, land usurpers, corrupt large-scale farmers or radical merchants. That was in the interest of their ideology, where the number of fighters increased. In addition, this expansion came in the absence of the government, which withdrew from many rural areas or limited its intervention to weak security forces.
Adding to the government's negligence, the organization managed to kill several officers while attacking the Ayacucho prison to free some of its members in April 1982. The authorities declared a state of emergency and the Peruvian armed forces and local self-defense groups intervened. In the 1980s, the organization's members adopted violence and structured their ideology based on the notion of a “blood quota". The organization portrayed itself as a hero in a “people's war" demanding a share of blood to be paid by its members or others to achieve a military victory and build a new communist state. Everything was permitted, and for that the organization's combatants did not wear uniforms but camouflaged themselves with the population, giving rise to reprisals by the Army against innocent civilians.
That was not accidental, either. Guzman believed it was valid to resort to both, the truth and lies, in order to sow hatred among the population towards the Peruvian State. Such lack of scruples also translated into various forms of violence against State agents, and into the justification of his followers of their armed terrorist attacks, kidnappings, executions, bombings and massacres that they wrongfully committed. They were portrayed as “exemplary punishments". In 1983, the organization committed the Lucanamarca and the Uchuraccay massacres, the first as revenge against opponents of local leaders, and the second as punishment for assisting the national army.
On July 16, 1984, a similar massacre known as “The Death Express" took place, where operatives of the Shining Path seized a bus carrying citizens, and about 116 people were killed with stones, pickaxes and firearms. In 1985, two car bombings took place at the Palace of Justice and the Government Palace. In 1986, synchronized riots broke out by senderistas locked up in Lurigancho, El Frontón and Santa Bárbara prisons. Notably, the systematic violence of this organization in the eighties did not stop at “humans", but was also exercised against the infrastructure and power lines in cities such as Huancayo, Cerro de Pasco, Abancay, Ayacucho and Lima.
From 1989 to 1992, Guzman determined the onset of a new phase of his people's war within the framework of his writings, “Pensamiento Gonzalo" (Gonzalo´s Thought). He believed then in the need to achieve parity between the forces of the organization and the forces of the Peruvian government, which was known as “Strategic Balance" and called for the escalation of violence in all its forms. His interpretation was not so far from reality since the Peruvian society was exhausted by a deep economic crisis of inflation and institutional instability, which pushed his supporters towards more extremism. The most striking example of such abuses was the “Ashaninka Holocaust" against the indigenous people, which involved the deaths, forced displacements and disappearances of many.
Decline of Terror
The brutality and violence of the Shining Path gradually pushed the peasant community away from them, as a result of their sadistic so-called “popular trials" which ended in executions by stoning or beheading. It was also a by-product of their systematic aggression againsr any local leader who was not a “senderista". This led to a rudimentary totalitarianism in these marginalized territories.
There is no doubt that the organization's bloody attacks in local markets contributed to increasing this aversion, as they were central to the economic life of peasants and other citizens. What enhanced the bloody stereotype of Guzman was his move against and besiegement of the city of Lima to starve and kill his opponents. In 1990, the repercussions of such excessive violence began to manifest more in civil society and across the political spectrum. This approach continued until Alberto Fujimori became President and began a series of policy reforms, including the issuance of a legislative decree giving the “local self-defense groups" a legal status to counter and fight the Shining Path.
Another innovative aspect of Fujimori's actions against the Shining Path was the strategy of “cutting off the snake's head". Investigations initiated by the Special Intelligence Group (GEIN) revealed that Guzman was central to the organization and that he was not hiding in mountainous areas, but in the city of Lima itself. They learned about aspects of his private life, such as the type of tobacco he smoked and the psoriasis he suffered from.
The search for Guzman had to be carried out subtly to avoid raising suspicions within the organization. The intelligence adopted a useful methodology by digging up and analyzing the remains of all houses in Lima, until the police found the remains of a certain cigarette brand and wrappers of psoriasis medicines. Accordingly, those areas had to be searched and investigated. Investigations continued until Guzman's hideout was found in an apartment located in a wealthy neighborhood of Lima.
The so-called “Fourth Sword of Communism" (Guzman) was captured on September 12, 1992, by the police without any resistance, together with a group of four women (one of them his wife) who were part of the central leadership of the Shining Path. On October 20, 1992, Abimael Guzman presented a peace agreement that the rest of the leadership signed later (in December 1993). Nevertheless, all of them were put on trial and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Conclusion
Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path) emerged in the 1980s. Its terrorism escalated non-stop until Guzman was arrested in the 1990s. However, former members of the organization reorganized under the guise of a civil organization known as the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights (MOVADEF) for political prisoners, which tried to become a political party, but was not allowed.
Guzman died after heavy life sentences in a high-security prison of the naval base “Kalaw" on September 11, 2021, at the age of 86. His death marked the end of the organization, with some small groups claiming that the Shining Path continues to exist to date. In fact, some anti-regime entities in Peru are resorting to the Guzman approach as a model of action, a banner to raise demands.