Sendero luminoso: Peruvian terrorist group - fact sheet and chronology prepared by Office of the Ambassador at Large for Counter-Terrorism - transcript

US Department of State Bulletin, Dec, 1989

Sendero Luminoso: Peruvian Terrorist Group

Introduction

Peru's Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) is an extremely dangerous and unpredictable terrorist and insurgency group. Its declared aim is to destroy existing Peruvian institutions and replace them with an Indian-based peasant revolutionary regime, inspired in part by Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in China.

Sendero intimidates the populace by executing--frequently in gruesome ways--civilians who have government and others it considers ideological enemies. It aggressively conducts political indoctrinations in areas it controls and, since 1987, has developed ties to narcotic traffickers and to the peasant coca growers whom it seeks to protect. Although initially operating as a guerilla force in the rural areas, Sendero has added urban terrorism as a complement to its rural "people's war" insurgency.

Background

Estimates of total numbers of people killed since May 1980--when Sendero began its violent campaign--reach almost 15,000, with nearly 2,000 killed last year.

Sendero becan as a movement in the late 1960s at the National University at San Cristobal of Huamanga in Ayacucho, a colonial-era provincial capital high in the Andes, 230 miles southeast of Lima. Abimael Guzman Reynoso, its founder who is called "President Gonzalo" by his followers, was a philosophy professor at the university and a leader of the pro-Chinese faction within Peru's Communist Party. In 1970 he and his faction took the name "Shining Path of Jose Carlos Mariategui," the founder of the Communist Party in Peru in the 1920s. Sendero went underground in 1978 and, 2 years later, launched its first violent attack--on a rural polling station on May 17, 1980, burning all the ballot boxes. Sendero's antidemocractic nature was particularly apparent in this first attack since the 1980 election marked the return to civilian rule in Peru after 12 years of military dictatorship.

Estimates of the number of Sendero militants range up to 5,000, with many more supporters. Although Sendero focuses its appeal on the disadvantaged ethnic Indian segment of Peru's population, it h as successfully recruited among the sons and daughters of the middle and upper classes as well. It also seeks to recruit 13-15-year-olds as armed militants since they can be more easily propagandized into supporting with unmitigating violence Sendero's cause.

Ideology

Looking to Mao Zedong for inspiration, Sendero considers its philosophy as the fullest development of "scientific communist thought" and seeks to establish, through violent revolution, a "People's Republic of New Democracy" in Peru. It deeply distrusts Soviet and Cuban "revisionism" and has dubbed the Soviets "social imperialists." Sendero also distrusts Nicaragua, North Korea, and virtually all other communist regimes. It denouces Deng Xiaoping's "revisionism" in China, viewing instead the deposed "Gang of Four" as heroes of the Cultural Revolution. Sendero leader Guzman, according to documents from the group's fourth plenum of the Central Committee, also labeled Libya's Muammer Qadhafi "a fake."

Sendero's goal is to destroy not only the government but also the social order. It claims to champion the disadvantaged Indian peasants but shows no remorse in killing those who, in its view, display a "petit rural bourgeoisie" mentality. Sendero also implements a strict moral code--including no smoking or drinking--and despite aiding narcotic traffickers and coca growers, it is known to have executed those under its control found using drugs themselves.

Strategy and Tactic

Sendero has attempted to terrorize the population through violence and has murdered government officials, parliamentarians, judges, political activists, journalists, development workers (both foreign and native), professors, teachers, peasants, and occasionally tourists. In 1988 alone, it killed 17 provincial mayors. It has attacked government buildings and foreign embassies. Following the shooting of two parliamentary deputies in May 1989 (one attack apparently criminally motivated), over 20 parliamentary deputies from two different political parties publicly announced that they had received death threats or attempts on their lives, indicating the extent to which public officials have been threatened by the terrorist violence.

Rural and urban. Similar to Mao's doctrine of encircling the cities from the countryside, Sendero sees the rural areas as the principal theater for its armed attacks. Urban subversion and terrorism, however, have become increasingly important to its strategy. In a July 1988 interview (the first the secretive Sendero leader had given since 1979), Guzman stated that Sendero must be prepared for what he characterized as the "final assault"--the taking of the cities. Other documents from early 1988 also indicate that Sendero was stressing urban subversion and terrorism as a complement to its rural warfare.

This new urban emphasis, however, was dealt a severe, but not crippling, blow when Osman Morote Barrionuevo, believe to be Sendero's second-in-command, was arrested in Lima and convicted later in 1988. Other recent setbacks were the early August arrests in Lima of 29 Sendero members which, according to the Peruvian Interior Minister, dismantled a major subversive network, and the arrest later in the month of Samuel Vidal Espinoza, a Sendero leader who was charged with several crimes, including the murder of Rodrigo Franco, a high-ranking government official.