Abimael Guzman, founder of the Sendero Luminoso terrorist organization, died at 86. He was serving a life sentence at the naval base in Callao, Peru.
The terrorist had been ill for some time. The country’s prison authority said the death was due to his health condition, without disclosing further details. In the days leading up to his death, Guzman opposed moving a health facility to receive treatment. He also refused food for a few days. His followers nicknamed Guzman “The Fourth Sword of Marxism”, comparing him to the figures of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Tse Tung.
The idea of pardoning “senderist” leaders had recently been put forward, a proposal that was met with little enthusiasm by public opinion.
The group
The armed struggle of Sendero Luminoso put the Peruvian state in crisis during the 1980s. The organization has its roots in the principles of Maoism, the current of communist thought initiated by Mao Tse Tung, the father of the People’s Republic of China. On this ideological basis Guzman founded Sendero Luminoso, transforming a disordered band of radical peasants and students into one of the most aggressive guerrilla organizations in South America. During the period of the fighting, rumors began to circulate around his alleged death. Assumptions denied in 1990, when the Peruvian police released a stolen video in which Guzman was seen dancing and singing with other militiamen, apparently drunk.
The images undermined the reputation of the leader of Sendero Luminoso, hitherto cloaked in a halo of austerity and rigor.
In the 1980s, the death of his first wife, Augusta La Torre, who disappeared in circumstances that have not yet been clarified. In 2010 he married his long-time lover, Elena Iparraguirre, who was also sentenced to life imprisonment.
The arrest
Guzman was captured in 1992 in Lima and sentenced to life in prison. After his arrest, the militia’s military obstinacy collapsed, but some pockets of diehards still operate in the country. A second life sentence comes in 2018 for a car bomb that killed 25 people in the capital. According to some estimates, Sendero Luminoso is responsible for 69 thousand deaths between 1980 and 2000. Former professor of philosophy, he was a communist all his life. Since the late 1960s he has traveled to China to learn more about Maoism. The thought of the father of the Chinese homeland will provide theoretical justification for the terrorist attacks he ordered.
The origins
Starting from Ayacucho, in the Andes, the terrorist group has attracted thousands of proselytes from farming communities and universities.
The first symbolic action of Sendero Luminoso dates back to 1981, when the militants hang thousands of dogs from the lampposts of the city of Lima. “The dogs of capitalism,” read the signs posted to the animals. By the late 1980s the group had become such a threat to national security that two-thirds of Peruvians lived in areas subject to martial law to contain the actions of the militiamen.