Shining Path (Terrorist Group) – History Wars  Weapons
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Shining Path (Terrorist Group)
Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) is a Peruvian Maoist terrorist group founded in the 1960s as the Communist Party of Peru by Abimael Guzmán, a Marxist philosopher who worked as a professor of philosophy at the San Cristóbal of Huamanga University in Ayacucho, Peru. In the mid 1970s Shining Path became the armed branch of the party, holding its first clandestine meetings in Ayacucho in March 1980. That year, in May, this extremist leftist group committed their first act of terrorism by burning the ballot boxes of the presidential elections they refused to take part as they do not believe in democracy, but in the dictatorship of the proletariat (workers).
At the beginning, the new democratic government of President Belaunde Terry underestimated the strength and determination of its members and the response was ineffectual as thousands of Peruvian peasants were left to their own devices, caught in what was called the "emergency zone" in the Ayacucho Region, in the Peruvian Andes. The Maoist terrorists forced the Indian peasants to contribute with food, money, and clothing to the organization and those who refused were brutally murdered; those who escaped reported to the Peruvian Army these killings and that their products were being seized by the leftist guerrillas. As a result, the government ordered the military to train the farmers and provided them with weapons to protect themselves against terrorist raids.
By mid 1980s, Shining Path took their murderous war to big cities, planting bombs to eliminate the "unwanted", kidnapping businessmen, politicians, and labor union leaders as this urban guerrilla intensified each year. Thus, by the end of the 1980s, thousands of people had been killed by this terrorist group. However, in July 1990, Alberto Fujimori, a Japanese descendant, won the presidential elections. To comply with the electoral campaign promises, Fujimori launched a strong counterattack against Shining Path, the scourge of the Peruvian Nation, giving a strong support to the Peruvian Army. By early 1992, the military and national police were closing in on every Shining Path guerrilla units in the jungle and on urban terrorist cells in cities. Finally, the Peruvian military caught the leader of this Maoist organization, Abimael Guzmán, who was sentenced to life and sent to San Lorenzo Island Naval Base prison.
With the capture and imprisonment of its leader, Shining Path divided into several groups as the organization dwindled in number and their terrorist activity decreased sharply. Nevertheless, the group is still active, operating in the Peruvian jungle, extending their ideological and propaganda influence as far as Northwest of Argentina. In 2005, Shining Path murdered eight policemen in Huanuco, central Peru. Another attack carried out by this group in 2010 left two police officers and three civilians dead.