Special for Infobae de The New York Times.
Abimael Guzmán, founder and leader of the Shining Path guerrilla movement, which sowed terror in much of Peru during the 1980s and 1990s, died Saturday. He was 86 years old.
Guzmán died in a maximum security prison located at the Callao naval base in Peru, where he was serving a life sentence, according to prison officials. They said he died of health complications, but did not specify an exact cause.
An estimated 70,000 Peruvians died during the heyday of the Shining Path insurgency, at least a third of these at the hands of the guerrillas. Shining Path advocated a violent reordering of society away from the vices of urban life. Its leaders echoed Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge with warnings that “rivers of blood” would flow after their victory, and that up to a million Peruvians could be executed.
Shining Path was almost entirely Guzmán’s idea, and for a time he seemed ready to seize power in one of the most important countries in Latin America. Declared a Maoist, his movement was one of the most violent and radical in the modern history of the hemisphere, and his fertile mind and extraordinary power of persuasion laid the foundation for an intense cult of personality.
Like many of his generation in Latin America, Guzmán was fascinated by Fidel Castro’s revolutionary victory in Cuba in 1959. However, later, he came to despise Castro, the Soviet Union, and even moderate factions in China.
Guzmán visited China several times and returned from that country with the vision of a Peru without money, banks, industry or foreign trade, where everyone would be landowners and would live off barter.
The two main communist parties in Peru expelled him, but he developed a devoted circle of students and teachers.
“He was a very charismatic teacher, with an entertaining rhetorical style that really appealed to the students,” said political scientist David Scott Palmer in 2013. “In part, he became so strong because of 17 years of preparation and also because the missteps of the government created favorable conditions for the revolution ”.
(Palmer, who as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s shared an office at the National University of San Agustín with Guzmán, a faculty member, died in 2018).
In 1980, the Shining Path carried out its first violent actions, including the bombing of voting centers and the seizure of city councils in remote villages. One morning in December, the people of Lima, the capital, found dead dogs hanging from dozens of lanterns. Around the neck of each of the dogs was a poster with a slogan that referred to the fighting between factions within the Communist Party of China.
This was the first sign of the ghostly brutality that was about to descend on Peru. Guzmán, who called himself Chairman Gonzalo, proclaimed himself the “Fourth Sword of Communism”, after Marx, Lenin and Mao. He preached “Gonzalo Thought”, which would lead the world, according to Guzmán, to a “higher stage of Marxism.”
“When the Shining Path took up arms, the attempt seemed like an unfortunate effort to graft the Chinese experience into Peruvian culture, which is totally different,” wrote Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti. “For most of the people in Peru, including the legitimate left, the movement seemed to be a mad sect, irretrievably divorced from reality.”
But Guzmán’s fighters launched a very successful military campaign that brought much of the country under their control. Terror and murder were the preferred tactics. The conflict spread from rural areas to Lima, where supplies of water, electricity and food became unreliable.
Bombs exploded in cinemas, restaurants and police stations. The kidnappings were widespread. Notices appeared on the walls warning civilians to flee. Thousands did. The economy, already in critical condition due to poor political leadership, plunged into chaos.
Shining Path tried to find support among indigenous peoples whose needs had long been ignored by the Peruvian elite, although many of these indigenous peoples were also victims of the insurgency. Part of Guzmán’s strategy was to push the nation’s army into bloody reprisals, to expose its “fascist guts.”
On September 12, 1992, members of a special police unit dedicated to tracking down the Shining Path leaders surrounded a house in an affluent neighborhood of Lima and captured Guzmán. He appeared before a military court dressed in a black and white striped prison uniform. The hooded judges found him guilty of terrorism offenses and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
In 1993, Guzmán appeared several times on Peruvian television and asked Sendero Luminoso fighters to hand over their weapons. Most did, and the rebellion faded.
Manuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reynoso was born on December 3, 1934 in the town of Mollendo, on the southern coast of Peru. His father, who had six children by three women, won a prize in the national lottery and sent him to a Roman Catholic high school and college.
After graduating in law and philosophy, Guzmán joined the faculty of the National University of San Agustín in the mountainous city of Arequipa and became director of its teacher training program, which attracted students from indigenous peoples.
It is not known if Guzmán had children. As a young man he married Augusta La Torre, daughter of a leader of the Communist Party in Ayacucho. Known as “Comrade Norah”, she became the second in command of Shining Path. He died in 1988 under mysterious circumstances.
In 2010, when Guzmán was 75 years old, the authorities gave him permission to marry Elena Iparraguirre, who had replaced Comrade Norah as second in command of Shining Path and was also serving a life sentence on terrorism charges. They continued to be held in separate prisons.
Guzmán was subjected to a second trial, before a civil court, after his military trial was declared unconstitutional. In 2006, he was convicted of aggravated terrorism and murder, and his life sentence upheld. At the trial, he screamed what might have been his last public words.
“Long live the Communist Party of Peru!” He yelled, shaking a fist above his head. Glory to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism! Glory to the Peruvian people! Long live the heroes of the People’s War! ”.