What is Sendero Luminoso?
Sendero Luminoso (also known as Shining Path or just Sendero) is an extremist faction of the Peruvian Communist Party. Its full name is 'The Communist Party of Peru by the Shining Path of Jose Carlos Mariategui and Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, and the Thoughts of Chairman Gonzalo.'
It was created in 1970 and has been waging an "armed struggle" against the Peruvian government since 1980. It is the most radical revolutionary Marxist guerrilla organization in the West today, and the movement with the greatest chance of achieving its goal of toppling the government and instituting its own social order. Sendero is a truly home-grown insurgency. It has never received aid or support from any foreign government. Its money comes from 'bank expropriations' and its symbiotic relationship with cocaine growers and traffickers, its arms and explosives are acquired by theft and capture in battle, and its recruits come from the fringes of Peruvian society.
Its emergence as a military force was preceded by a very long period of careful political organization and clandestine preparation. It is an organization that is not afraid to use violence but always does so for political effect, against targets that have been selected (in many cases) years in advance. This article will examine the course of Sendero's campaign against the government of Peru and the tactics used by the movement.
Background
Sendero Luminoso came out of the chronic political unrest that characterized Latin American society in the 1960's. In 1960 in the rural department of Ayacucho in central Peru, a man named Abimael Guzman Reynoso assumed the post of head of the philosophy department of the local university. He was also the local head of the Peruvian Communist Party (PCP). Guzmanis highly intelligent and very charismatic, and used his influence to build up a clandestine faction made up of his favored students and colleagues within the PCP.
In 1970, after a series of internal power struggles, Guzman's faction, now known as Sendero Luminoso, began the long, slow process of political organization for the Armed Struggle that they believed to be the only way to victory. His strategy was derived from Mao Zedong's prescription for a rural-based guerrilla war in three general phases:
Preparatory
A defensive phase, emphasizing political preparation and reconnaissance, and usually based in the outlying rural areas of a country. The aim is to develop ties with 'the masses', and create an underground organization that will allow the formation, support, and expansion of small covert military and political forces. Sendero calls this phase the "strategic defensive."
Attritional
A mixed offensive and defensive phase, during which the insurgents try to sap the government's military strength through guerrilla warfare methods (summed up by Mao as "Strategically, our one against their ten; tactically, our ten against their one"). They build up the level of training of their military units through combat, their stocks of military equipment through capture, and increase the number, variety, and mobility of their guerrilla units. They also try to attack the political authority and legitimacy of the government through terror, intimidation, and the setting up of an alternate political structure in areas where the insurgents have control. Sendero calls this "strategic balance."
Offensive
An offensive phase in which larger units of the standing guerrilla army engage the weakened government units on more equal terms. The covert political organization of the insurgents begins to govern openly in "liberated" areas. Insurrections begin in the larger towns and cities, former strongholds of government power. The government, by now outgunned militarily and politically, folds and is replaced with the New Government. Sendero refers to this as the "Strategic Offensive."
An old slogan of Tito's Communist guerrillas fighting the German occupiers in Yugoslavia was 'the worse it is, the better it is.' The same is true of a home- grown insurgency like Sendero Luminoso. The movement advances only so far as conditions of general social and economic decline permit it, so its method of operation is to cause economic sabotage and disruption, resist any forces for 'progress' that it does not control, and exploit societal conflicts and contradictions.
Among these last are: racial and sexual oppression; inequality in standards of living and employment opportunities; the friction between the three branches of the armed services, the police, and their unstable relationship with the political leadership; and the general chaos caused by a moribund economy, widespread corruption caused by cocaine trafficking, and crippling foreign debt.
Preparation for the Armed Struggle
This phase, which would take almost ten years to complete, had the dual pur pose of marshaling popular support and conducting reconnaissance for the "armed struggle" phase to follow it.
Senderista professors encouraged their students to write their graduating theses on the power structures of different peasant communities in Ayacucho. These were in fact estimates of the local political and social situation, similar to the area studies the CIA compiles on foreign countries, and designed to reveal in which geographical areas Shining Path could make headway.
The party leadership received a constant stream of information on each area's military geography, the local power structure, the level of political awareness of the peasants, and especially identification of key figures in each community's power and authority networks. These were people who would be assassinated or publicly executed by Sendero members once the "armed struggle" had been declared.
In 1980 Guzman judged that the process was far enough advanced to open the Armed Struggle phase of his plan.
The Armed Struggle: Strategic Defensive
Sendero soon established a standard formula to spread its influence through out rural Peru. The general objective was, after careful reconnaissance, to decapitate or neutralize the existing order in a community and replace State authority structures with their own. Their propaganda methods combined words and action. A typical pattern would be for a Sendero "column" to enter a village, round everyone up at gunpoint and shepherd them into the main square, and address the crowd.
They would sell or distribute Sendero printed propaganda to those who could read. Where possible, they would also hold public executions at these meetings to prove they meant business. Rich and/or uncooperative landowners or peasants would be killed and their property 'redistributed' among the poorer peasants of the village.
The Sendero guerrillas would also stage "people's trials" in which they would enact justice according to their own puritanical code.
Prostitutes, drug addicts, thieves, informers, and corrupt policemen would be denounced by the community, "investigated" by the local Sendero people's committee, and summarily executed in a variety of nasty and symbolic ways.
Execution by gunshot was common, as were beheading by machete, or having a stick of dynamite attached to one's neck "for not thinking correctly."
Once the old order had been displaced or neutralized by terror or murder, the Sendero unit would take steps to set up a new "people's committee" to fill the power vacuum with a working unit of the Shining Path. The main foci of action were the departments of Ayacucho, Junin, Lima, and Apurimac, but incidents of guerrilla violence occurred in almost every one of Peru's 24 departments during 1981-82. There was an overall doubling of guerrilla attacks and violent incidents from 1983 to 1986.
Sendero also moved in force into the Upper Huallaga Valley, where over half of the world's supply of coca leaf grows, and began collecting 'contributions' from the cocaine traffickers there in return for protection from government interference.
The increasing audacity and number of Sendero attacks were accompanied by a concerted effort to undermine what legitimacy the democratic process had in Peru . General and municipal elections during the 1980's were deprived of meaning by acts of sabotage, violence, and intimidation by Sendero. In areas where the population could not be persuaded to support the movement, it was terrorized into neutrality — and in either case the guerrillas moved in as the arbiters of life, death, and justice.
The Armed Struggle: Strategic Balance
After advancing inexorably and almost continuously during the 1980's, the situation in the early 1990's was declared by Guzman to be a "Strategic Balance." The next step was to prepare for the "Strategic Offensive" that would, in his plan, topple the government, delivering the large cities and ultimate power into Sendero's hands. However, Sendero began to encounter a number of obstacles in Peruvian society and politics. One of the most important obstacles was the resurgent determination of Peru 's new government and its security forces. Alberto Fujimori was elected President in 1990 and was regarded by many as a real agent for change.
Throughout 1991, Fujimori overhauled the leadership of the armed services and police, replacing the previous leaders with people loyal to him. On 6 April 1992, with the complicity of the military senior leadership, Fujimori declared a state of emergency and suspended the constitution, the Congress, the judiciary and normal civil liberties indefinitely, in what was known as the autogolpe or 'self-coup.' Government security forces took this opportunity to go after Sendero with a vengeance. Their efforts were rewarded in the summer and fall of 1992. The main Sendero news/propaganda organ, El Diario, was shut down once and for all and the main editors forced into foreign exile. The biggest prize of all was taken on 12 September 1992, when Abimael Guzman himself, his second-in-command Elvia Iparraguirre, and other members of the National Central Committee were captured in Lima. Guzman was sentenced to life in prison and fined $25 billion.
Certain social forces in Peruvian society have always been obstacles in Sendero's path. In the case of the trade unions and the political parties of the Left, the tendency has always been towards radicalism but not to terrorism or the complete reformation of society urged by Sendero. For its part, Sendero condemns the Left because it resists violent rebellion.
The Roman Catholic Church is another center of power in Peru. Its conservative wing has a stake in the existing social order and its progressive wing, which encourages peasants to organize themselves and demand their human rights — while abhorring violence, is viewed by Sendero as a dangerous ideological competitor.
The Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA) is Peru's other guerrilla movement. It is equally opposed to the Maoist dogmatism of Sendero and the military backed regimes of Presidents Alan Garcia and Alberto Fujimori. It has about 500 fighters and an equal number of sympathizers. Peru's government has found the MRTA to be a less formidable and more reasonable opponent than Sendero.
The movement has more trouble with factionalism and its fighters are neither as well trained nor as ideologically committed as most Sendero fighters. There have even been temporary truces concluded between the government and MRTA, and while the MRTA guerrillas in the Upper Huallaga Valley do not collaborate with the Army, both forces are engaged in fighting Sendero columns there. As both the dominant power in South America and Peru's major foreign creditor and donor of aid, the attitude and actions of the United States are crucial.
Currently, the United States seems more interested in eradicating the coca crop than helping the government fight Sendero or addressing the conditions that brought both the cocaine trade and Sendero into being.
President Bill Clinton announced in February 1994 that of a total budget appropriation of $13.2 billion (up 8% from the year before) for the "War on Drugs,"' only 3% or $428 million would be used to assist in the economic development of source countries in Asia and Latin America — contingent upon 100% eradication of cocaine and heroin production. Clearly, this carrot is nowhere near large enough to have an effect — and it has been proven that a bigger stick is not the answer, either.
Peru - Year Zero?
What is the possibility of a Sendero Luminoso victory in Peru? Neither side seems to have the upper hand at the moment, but in guerrilla wars the insurgents do not lose as long as the government fails to win. Sendero has advanced much farther than any other insurgency in South America through a long campaign of patient organization, reconnaissance, and carefully timed violence.
However, Abimael Guzman's arrest was a crippling blow. His intelligence, dynamic character, and what amounted to a personality cult within the movement made up much of Sendero's strength. For the revolution to continue, leadership must be claimed by a faction within the Party, but there are as yet no clear indications which faction is running things. Since 1992, Sendero has continued to operate at a much reduced level, but the violence continues and much of the country is still under martial law.
The government has won some needed breathing space, but it is obvious that Sendero is a symptom and not the cause of Peru's chronic social, political, and economic weaknesses. For the government to win decisively against the guerrillas, it must address these problems decisively. This will entail sweeping changes in the way Peru is governed and a radical change in the existing power structure. Those with a stake in that power structure will inevitably resist these necessary changes, but must also ask them selves which alternative they prefer: a changed society with greater openness and egalitarianism, an economy that really works, in a rudimentary functioning democracy; or a 'reformed' society under Sendero that would in essence do to Peru what Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge did to Cambodia.
Author Brian Train, a former Canadian Army officer, is an internationally recognized specialist on urban terrorism and guerrilla movements. Map on page 12 is from Brian's Sendero Luminoso game.
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© Copyright 1997 by David W. Tschanz.
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