Latin America in Translation/en Traducción/em Tradução

A History of the Millenarian War in Peru

Gustavo Gorriti, Robin Kirk

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9780807866856
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

First published in Peru in 1990, The Shining Path was immediately hailed as one of the finest works on the insurgency that plagued that nation for over fifteen years. A richly detailed and absorbing account, it covers the dramatic years between the guerrillas' opening attack in 1980 and President Fernando Belaunde's reluctant decision to send in the military to contain the growing rebellion in late 1982. Covering the strategy, actions, successes, and setbacks of both the government and the rebels, the book shows how the tightly organized insurgency forced itself upon an unwilling society just after the transition from an authoritarian to a democratic regime. One of Peru's most distinguished journalists, Gustavo Gorriti first covered the Shining Path movement for the leading Peruvian newsweekly, Caretas. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and an impressive array of government and Shining Path documents, he weaves his careful research into a vivid portrait of the now-jailed Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman, Belaunde and his generals, and the unfolding drama of the fiercest war fought on Peruvian soil since the Chilean invasion a century before.

1: Return to Democracy

Weariness and disenchantment with the military government gave way to hope for a fresh start over the first weeks of the new decade. An eagerness for democracy took hold, with all the self-confidence of an early adulthood won after a perilous schooling. The past decade had seen the social fabric fray, rip in places, all had changed; yet the nation emerged more robust, more complex, more capable. An increase in exports and the economic recovery accomplished under Economy Minister Javier Silva Ruete and Central Reserve Bank president Manuel Moreyra prompted some qualified observers to speculate that, under a democratic government, the economy was sure to perform beyond expectations. For example, economist Roberto Abusada wrote, “There is no reason why Peru could not grow 10 percent or more per year.”¹ A few months later, Abusada was to become one of the most important members of the new government’s economic team. As such, he became a protagonist and witness to the sad contrast between his hopeful analysis and the reality of the following years.²

Among civilian elites, the attitude and thinking that predominated was that the imminent transition to democracy meant growth, not a rupture. An article written by ex–foreign minister Carlos García Bedoya,³ at the time one of the most prestigious civilians who had served the military government, asserted that the 1970s had brought the demolition of old hierarchies, the elimination of historical flaws, and the incorporation of vast majorities long kept on the peripheries of national life. Starting where the military government left off, the future civilian government had a foundation upon which to build a modern, free society.

It’s not possible to deny a certain merit to the argument, but its negative implications should also be noted: it condoned even as it stimulated the pendulum swing between civilian and military rule, suppressed rational analysis in the interest of diplomacy, and persisted in the distorted understanding of history endemic to Peru, which has paid the price generation after generation.

One of the photos used to illustrate the article expresses now a very different message from what it expressed then. In it appear some civilian experts who served the second stage of the military government. In the center is Alvaro Meneses, then president of the National Bank and later a notorious fugitive in the Banco Ambrosiano embezzlement scandal. It’s perhaps a somewhat exaggerated symbol of an entire new class that enriched itself by plundering the state over the course of a decade.

These were weeks, months of optimism about the country’s historic destiny. Among the presidential candidates, Fernando Belaunde best sensed the collective spirit. After twelve years of the generals’ frequently artificial-sounding severity, his unassuming style appeared authentic and warm. “Work and let others work” was his slogan, summing up the reigning mood even when interpreted maliciously. At the time and until 1982, it was common to hear emphatic declarations that Belaunde was “a sir” (in contrast to those other yokels) and a “luxury president,” perhaps the highest compliment Lima society could bestow.

A gradual yet intense foreboding about the natural world provided counterpoint to upbeat political and social expectations. An article published a decade earlier by American seismologist Brian Brady had predicted a cataclysmic earthquake for 1980. Since January of that year, fear of an imminent disaster deaf to entreaties for mercy took hold; by February, there was widespread belief that a telluric apocalypse was imminent. In March, with the earth intact and Brady’s prophetic reputation in shambles, at least in Peru attention focused once again on human events.

The presidential campaign had begun with the new year. Within Popular Action, Belaunde’s political party, there was obviously no question about who would become the official candidate. But Fernando Belaunde was also interested in presenting himself as a candidate of the Popular Christian Party (PPC). In the end, his conversations with Luis Bedoya Reyes, the PPC boss who was offered the post of vice-president, bore no fruit. The first opinion polls had given a slight advantage to Belaunde, 20 percent compared with Bedoya’s 18 percent. With this virtual tie, and without taking into account the factions within each party opposed to a union, it was difficult to agree on who would occupy key jobs or make campaign decisions.

Both parties nipped at the heels of the Apra, polling at 24 percent and at the time considered the probable victor. The military government clearly favored the Apra. It was even assumed that the recent death of Apra founder Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre would rebound paradoxically to the Apra’s electoral advantage, laying to rest old hatreds and freeing the energies of a new generation of leaders.

In January, the Apra’s ticket was announced. It was led by Armando Villanueva, a veteran militant and leader who had a reputation as a tough guy. But the battle for dominance among Haya de la Torre’s heirs had shaken the party. Villanueva’s victory over Andrés Townsend, who had only partially resigned himself to becoming the Apra’s candidate for vice-president, did not end the clash between opposing factions, also battling over control of the party and its direction. At the time, Villanueva supported a return to the Apra’s “light-filled springs,” using party vernacular, and spoke in the rhetoric of the left as he appeared to promise a social democratic administration. Townsend was decidedly anti-Communist and closer to a Christian democrat perspective.

Up to the very moment the official candidate list was announced (with no shortage of arrogance called “the roll,” Venezuelan style), the dispute within the Apra raged. Hostilities festered between the party’s political factions, like a deeply divided family. At the beginning of February, the slap that Helena Távara, Town-send’s pugnacious mother-in-law, had aimed at Alan García in the Apra headquarters known as the People’s House kept political gossips titillated for weeks, although it did nothing to shake Villanueva’s dominance.

The most conspicuous battles were settled once the candidates were formally registered. Yet they were replaced by systematic sabotage carried out by the pro-Townsend faction and by a war of rumors and graffiti waged through personal attacks. Wall graffiti deriding Villanueva’s Chilean wife was added to whisperings about a supposed military veto of his candidacy on those grounds.

Nevertheless, Villanueva’s candidacy flourished. As the year began, it was believed that his lead in the polls would grow during the campaign. Many of the newly wealthy, that emerging plutocracy created and nourished by government debenture loans and illegal commissions awarded during military rule, left behind without a murmur the anti-Apra stance they had assumed during the Velasco years and began making contributions to the Apra’s campaign.

No single individual was more important than Carlos Langberg, a Peruvian recently returned from Mexico with a rumored fabulous fortune, close contacts with the military government, and a disturbing affinity for violence. Langberg paid a large part of the Apra’s campaign expenses and supervised the production of television advertisements, many made by a team he brought from Mexico.

In 1982, when a magazine investigation revealed Langberg’s key role in the largest single case of cocaine trafficking known to date,⁴ he had become a figure of decisive power within the Apra, both threatening and overwhelming. His subsequent fall meant the fall of what was possibly the most important Peruvian drug-trafficking syndicate that had existed up to that moment. Within the Apra, it sparked the internal renewal movement that would thrust Alan García to party leadership and the presidency of the Republic soon afterward. But that is another story.

The Marxist left was more disorganized, more unstable, than it had been for Constitutional Assembly elections. The various coalitions and groupings drew together, drew apart, and drew together again within a few months, leaving behind a wake of acronyms and complex affiliations and ruptures. In January, Left Unity (UI) presented a ticket featuring Genaro Ledesma, Jorge del Prado, and Antonio Meza Cuadra, of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR). The alliance between the Peruvian Workers, Peasants, and Students Front (FOCEP) and the pro-Soviet Communist Party lasted less than a month. The Trotskyites united behind the candidacy of Hugo Blanco of the Workers Revolutionary Party (PRT), which during one stage of the campaign had on its ticket Alfonso Barrantes, who represented the Leftist Revolutionary Association (ARI). Several pro-Maoist groups joined within the National Union of the Revolutionary Left (UNIR). The various factions of Revolutionary Vanguard and other groups on the heterodox left came together in the Peruvian Democratic Unity (UDP). Finally, Genaro Ledesma continued to be FOCEP’s candidate after its break from the UI.

This electoral ferment, a reflection of substantial though disorderly development, had dazzled the Marxist left and within a few months had produced some of the most important changes in its history. Trotskyites and Maoists, Third Worlders and pro-Soviets together entered the democratic system and, in so doing, were slowly yet inescapably united. The dogmatic disputes they shared, immutable as long as they remained in clandestinity, lost importance before the imperative of articulating a parliamentary strategy. At times imperceptibly, at times acknowledged by all, rivalries and doctrinal differences gave way, and the positioning of groups and political parties increasingly reflected electoral maneuvering rather than ideological schisms.

This process was only partially voluntary and was marked by frequent hesitation. But it was decisive. And if one had to select a moment to symbolize this transition, I would choose the Maoist coalition UNIR’s final 1980 presidential campaign rally, when veteran teachers’ union leader Horacio Zeballos brandished a stick rifle from the stage as he spoke to his party.

Within the context of the campaign, few declarations about abandoning violence and embracing legality could have been more eloquent. At the same time, however, Zeballos’s skeletal frame, perhaps already on the brink of death and waving about a toy rifle, gave ammunition to the sworn anti-Communists who remained convinced that the Marxists’ electoral intentions were simply part of their strategy to take simultaneous advantage of all legal and illegal means to victory.

Yet the situation was precisely the opposite. Whether willingly or not, those on the left had successfully joined the system. And they began to have a stake in maintaining the system’s stability and a practical responsibility for solving daily problems. As part of the government, the left would have an important role to play in changing the nation’s course; in turn, it would undergo substantial change. The following years simply reinforced this evolution. The brandishing of a stick rifle on the eve of elections symbolized the send-off of one era and the beginning of another.

If the Shining Path had not existed, the left’s incorporation into the system would have been more visible and complete, and today the Marxist left would be a pillar of democratic stability, part of a lively and vibrant political process, and an entirely peaceful one.

But it did exist. The Shining Path saved its most strident attacks for leftist organizations that took part in elections, denouncing them for abandoning the revolutionary path. Which was, of course, entirely correct. For such groups, especially those with Maoist pasts, these puritan accusations—which they once would have shared—were at the very least unpleasant and slightly distorted their incorporation into the system.

While such harassment was extremely irritating to those Marxists turning toward legality, for the Shining Path it was absolutely necessary to attack these much larger groups, and thus steal away and chip at their support. That’s why the left’s presidential campaign had to advance along with a parallel battle of shouts, insults, stonings, and beatings with Shining Path militants (and their sympathizers, like Puka Llacta) who remained in semiclandestinity.

Several incidents, especially in Ayacucho, illustrated the passionate intensity of the confrontation between these diverging leftists. In October 1979, the UDP and other leftist groups organized a night rally in Ayacucho’s central square. In the morning of that same day, UDP leaders and members had challenged the Shining Path to a debate in a patio of Huamanga University’s Engineering Department. Carlos Malpica challenged Julio Casanova. Although Casanova was present, a student who was a Shining Path member rose to debate in his place. But Malpica made it clear that he would only debate another professor. Casanova did not acknowledge the challenge.

When it became clear that the verbal jousting was not to be, Javier Diez Canseco took center stage and in his familiar vehement style attacked the Shining Path. A Shining Path rock struck Diez Canseco’s face, causing a minor though eye-catching forehead wound. Immediately, a brawl began. It ended with the Shining Path’s eviction from the patio. The UDP members marched their banners triumphantly through Ayacucho’s streets, working themselves up for an evening rally.

But the rally went badly from the beginning. Since that afternoon, the UDP leaders had fought over the roles the speakers were to play and their order of presentation. Finally, it was decided that Carlos Tapia would speak briefly as the representative from Ayacucho and that Alfonso Barrantes would close the rally. Juan Granda introduced the speakers. As the rally was about to begin, it started to pour and people sheltered themselves in doorways. When it appeared as if the rally would fall apart, peasant leader Julio Orozco Huamaní (who, a few years later, would be arrested and “disappeared” as the war intensified) fell back on an Andean ritual to stop the rain. “Coca leaves were burned and it stopped raining.”⁵

But just as the heavens appeared to comply, a group of about twenty to thirty Shining Path militants attacked the rally-goers with homemade explosives. At first, the UDP members were too shocked to respond (this was the first time that explosives had been used in open attacks), but they quickly regrouped and their shock troops, armed with sticks and plywood shields, rousted the Shining Path militants from the square and chased them through the connecting streets.

The UDP’s election campaign intensified over the following months, at each step coming up against the Shining Path’s unrelenting hostility. In the city of Ayacucho and the surrounding towns and countryside, graffiti celebrating the armed struggle went up next to insults meant for the UDP (“Apra, UDP, and CIA, the same bullshit”). The campaign continued in a tense climate where the threat of a clash with the Shining Path, with blows or stone throwing, was always imminent. “With Tapia, we got around in a Volkswagen. If they had broken one of the windows, our campaign would have ended.”⁶

In Ayacucho city, Tapia and Granda also put up graffiti, competing with the Shining Path brush masters by covering over their slogans. They were accompanied by a small phalanx of United Student Federation (FUE) veterans, sufficient for the occasional street brawl. Always with the Shining Path.⁷

But when they ventured out into the countryside in their tenacious Beetle, going everywhere, especially in the final weeks of the campaign, they went alone. “If we went to Cangallo, Chuschi, or Vischongo, we would return the same day, to attend other rallies.”⁸ And although in many districts they faced an uphill battle against the Shining Path, in others they managed to establish a certain presence. In Chuschi, the UDP organized a musical group, while in Vischongo it established good relations with local folk healers. There, a UDP teacher had organized various students from local communities to do grass-roots work. In both towns, the UDP could count on rallies of between 100 and 200 people and had made friendships with communal authorities.

Nevertheless, in both towns, and even more so in other areas, the Shining Path’s influence was perceptible. Most educated residents worked for the Shining Path, and other organizations acknowledged its influence. In constant local conflicts, UDP militants held out for as long as possible. When they were overwhelmed, they would call on Tapia and Granda to breathe new ardor into their alternative message.

On one trip to Chuschi, a group of five young men of about eighteen or nineteen years of age stood around the Volkswagen with hostile gazes. The local UDP members told Tapia and Granda that these were Shining Path members. Tapia and Granda returned their “ugly looks.” After glaring at each other for awhile, the Shining Path members retreated but without leaving town.

Everywhere, on walls, on blackboards, and in rumors, word of the imminence of armed insurrection spread. Almost every day at about four or five in the morning, Shining Path groups would run through Ayacucho’s streets shouting synchronized slogans in support of “armed struggle.” There was talk of an armed camp in Socos, for example, and other places. The patio chalkboard in Higuera contained summonses to ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Shining Path
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction by Robin Kirk
• Preface to the English Edition
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• The Arrest
• 1: Return to Democracy
• 2: Chuschi
• 3: Mohammed, Mao, Macbeth
• 4: Expectations and the Transfer of Power
• 5: The Vanished Files
• 6: The Dogs of War
• 7: Guerrillas
• 8: The Quota
• 9: To Capture Weapons and Means
• 10: New Democracy
• 11: Tambo
• 12: The Emergency
• 13: Illusions
• 14: A City Dominated: A Blow Is Struck in Ayacucho
• 15: Let Us Develop the Guerrilla War
• 16: The Offer of Asylum to Guzmán
• 17: The Colloquium of the Blind: The Intelligence War
• 18: The Fall of Vilcashuamán
• 19: Party Military Thought
• 20: The Siege of Ayacucho
• Notes
• Index