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Published: September 14th 2006
Professor Riveria who was a friend of Guzman at the University came to speak to us today about the Shining Path (SP).
14 Years ago yesterday he was captured in a house with 4 women in Lima. That day stands as the fall of the Shining Path movement.
69,000 DEAD
15,000 STILL MISSING
2,500 COMMUNAL GRAVES REPORTED
OF THE DEAD 45% WRE QUECHAN INNOCENT PEASANTS WHO WERE POOR AND LIVED IN THE HIGHLANDS AND 50% WERE FROM AYACUCHO
This violence caused millions and millions of dollars in damage to the infastructure of Peru including the destruction of bridges, schools, and public institutions.
When and Where did it Start?
In the 1960´s in Latin America there were revoltutions in Cuba and Venezula... There were many communist groups with influcences of Mao, Russian, Chinese ideologies. In 1965 in Peru there were new communist groups with such English names as Red Country, Red Star, etc. Also, there was the Shining Path.
The Shining Path has alot of Mao and Chinese influence. Abiemal Guzman was professor of Philosophy and a lawyer. He wanted to do the same thing that happened in China... start a revolution in the countryside and move to the cities. Guzman and other members trained in China in order to learn how to start this peasant army and take control of the cities.
Ayacucho was chosen as the place to start this revolution. Why Ayacucho? Before the 80´s Ayacucho was very isolated from Lima. There was no presence of goverment and lots of target. This made Ayacucho an easy target for SP.
Ayacucho didnt´have the electricity service they have now. Only some areas had electrictity and radios were scarce. The telephone was just arriving in Ayacucho and it was a luxury. Mostly there were a few communal telephones.
Right now... 2006 it takes 9 hours to drive to Lima on a paved road. Before the Shining Path it took between 18 and 19 hours to get to Lima because there were NO road. So, since they didn´t have roads they also didn´t have good relationships with other cities since it was hard to get there. You can see why Guzman chose Ayacucho.
May 18th 1980 in the village of Chusce the night before elections. The Shining Path came in with masks and burned all of the ballot boxes and declared with violence the Shining Path movement.
They started by brainwashing the peasants. They punished the bad husbands, killed crooked authorities, punished and killed bad landlords. In the countryside (at first) they won the acceptance of the peasants. It felt like the SP cared about them since there was no goverment presence. At the same time they started terror actions in the cities by destroying public institutions and anything else that was goverment related. They began in the city by destroying the few roads they had, destroying electric towers, police stations, schools. They wanted to break communication with the capitol city. Ayacucho spent months and months without electricty.
The goverment responded eventually be sending in the police since they thought these people were thiefs. When that didn´t work they sent in the military Army, Air Force, Marines, etc to control the actions here in Ayacucho.
It was EXTREMELY hard for them to fight since they NEVER said who they were. You couldn´t say anything against anyone because you never knew who was SP. It was like fighting a ghost.
They did most of their actions at night... The goverment declared the Department of Ayacucho (Ayacucho is not just a city but a department... like a county) an emergency state. From 6 PM to 6 AM there was a mandatory curfew. This curfew went on for more than 5 years!
Every night at midnight the goverment military would go knocking on doors looking for SP members. Marisol said one night they showed up at her house and somehow by the grace of god they did´not take her family members. They had a big truck outside filled with people they had taken. She said her neighbors disapearred the next night and they never saw them again.
According to Marisol and the people here (and history), the goverment was just as bad as the SP. She compared them a bit to Nazis. The would also go out at night and kill and take people.
Certain books were forbidden by the military.. Marx and communist ideolgoy books. Everyday you would see these books on the street with their dead owners. The military was setting an example for other people. The people in Ayacucho didn´t understand what was going on. The SP at night would write Chinese names and such on the walls and they didn´t understaand. One night in Lima dead dogs were hung down a street on lamposts with Marxist and Chinese graffiti. Marisol said her Literature teacher was a SP member and they found out one day when he informed them they had to read this certain communist book that was forbidden. Whey these High School age kids refused at first he insisted. She said they were terrifed and read it as quickly as possible by pasting a bible cover on the front of it. If they were caught by the military with that book they would have been killed.
She said one of her uncles was captured by the military when they found a book in a box that belonged to another one of her uncles. She said when he got out of prison a few days later he couldn´t use his hands or fingers from the torture.
The SP was growing and expanding into other departments and massacures were everywhere.
In the capitol they still didn´t understand what was going on. 8 Journalists from Lima came to Ayacucho to investigate. They went to a community and they were all killed including their guide from Ayacucho. It was said that the peasants killed and buried them however, years later they found a camera with some of the film from the journalists and some of the peasants were wearing watches and boots. It turns out it was the military that killed the journalists. They were afraid they´d find out about their atrocities. This caused and international outcry since it was really the first time a group of journalists were killed in such a way.
In Ayacucho in the 80´s there were 50,000 people. 10 years later there were 120,000 people as the people of the countryside fled to the cities like Ayacucho.
The SP were using cars as bombs and even donkey´s as bombs. They also used children as bombs. Marisol said they first time they used a child as a bomb was one day when she was walking to school with her sister. They walked past a resteraunt in the Plaza that was for the Police and soon an explosion went off. She said they felt pieces of people raining down on them and hitting them. The plaza and the walls were full of pieces of people.
Communities who were rivals also took advantage of the SP. On example there were two villages who had been rivals since colonial days over property and their ethnic backgrounds. One community captured 4 citizens of the other community and gave them to the military and military of course killed them. In response that community asked for help from the Shining Path and the SP killed everyone in the village with machetes and axes... EVERYONE!
The masscure of Cayacra. 3 military trucks went over this bridge and were blown up. The closest village was Cayacra so in response they went to this village and the military killed everyone in the village...women... children... men. They didn´t just kill them but they locked them in their huts and burned them alive. In truth this village was totally innocent.
In July 92 at a hotel called Las Americas in Miraflores (Lima) the SP rented a truck and filled with explosives. On the way the truck broken down 2 blocks from their target of this important goverment meeting. Instead it blew up in a civilian area. This was the first time the rich were really affected by the SP. There were alot of deaths and hundreds and hundreds of injured.
The UN declared the SP as the worst genocide in the world at the time. You hear some bitterness about that since it took a few rich people to die for the goverment and world to become interested. Meanwhile tens of thousands of innocent people have already died. People were dying everyday.
Alot of the people of Ayacucho suffer from Post Traumatic Stress, depression and other mental illness. I can´t imagine the horror they saw on a daily basis. They were really stuck between two evils.... The Shining Path and the Military with no place to escape.
An interesting note... Guzman was from Arequipa not Ayacucho. Also, he left Ayacucho in 1972 due to cirrohosis and needed to be at sea level. So during all of what Ayacucho went through he was never actually here but he was the intellectual author of the movement.
Once Guzman was captured it was the beginning of the end for SP.... The people here cherish the memory of that day.
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Monica
non-member comment
Shining Path
Oh my Gosh! That is so sad. It makes you want to count your blessings everyday. I can see why you felt called to go and help those people. blessings!