Sendero Luminoso

As I promised my sister here is more information on the history of the Shining Path in Peru, or Sendero Luminoso in Spanish. Sorry to those of you who do not enjoy boring political

stuff.

The story begins in the year 1968 when president Fernando Belaunde Terry was removed from office in a military coup. For twelve years the country was ruled by a radical military regime. By 1980, when Peru held popular elections again, the country was ripe for revolution. Many different groups of rebels scoured the country. One group was started by a man named Abimael Guzman. He was a professor of philosophy and began teaching communism and peasant-led revolution in the 1970’s. The group call themselves the “Sendero Luminoso” (SL) or shining path because they believed communism was the shinning path of the future, and Guzman was the self proclaimed president. By the 1980 elections, the SL had a large following of mostly rural farmers and peasants. But when they began burning ballot boxes to protest the elections hardly anyone noticed. At that point the SL was one of many rebel groups and only had a following in the sparsely populated Andes mountains. In 1980 President Fernando Belaunde Terry was re-elected and the country seemed to be headed in the right direction. But in the mountains the SL formed militia groups and took over control of large areas. The people supported them until they began to propose collective property ownership and abolishing the currency and local markets. The problem was anyone who fought the SL was killed. So by 1984 the SL was killing 14,000 people per year and controlled the central part of the country. The campesinos or rural people formed an illegal army armed with spears and slingshots to fight the SL and that only lead to more slaughters.

In 1985, new president Alan Garcia began to fight the SL by sending the Peruvian army into the mountains. The army couldn’t tell the SL from the campesinos so they began to kill everyone in infamous massacres that are still under investigation today. By 1986 the SL controlled 60% of the country and were attacking the capital of Lima. They bombed electrical towers to black out the city and detonated car bombs in front of government buildings and embassies. They also assassinated opposing party leaders, government officials, and even American and French citizens. This activity lead to the collapse of the economic system in Peru. Hyperinflation, the collapse of the currency, and huge debts followed.

Finally an independent organization called the Instituto Libertad y Democracia (ILD) got involved. The ILD identified the difference between the groups by the language they spoke: campesinos spoke Quecha and SL spoke only Spanish.  With the help of the US and ILD, the Peruvian government armed and trained the campesinos to fight the SL. The US got involved to fight communism and drug trafficking. The SL controlled the coca fields and were trafficking cocaine to US to fund the war. Once the peasants were armed, the tide turned and in 1992 President of the SL, Abimeal Guzman, was captured. After his capture the SL lacked leadership and fell apart but not quickly. The SL continued fighting for 15 more years and overall 70,000 people died or disappeared in the uprising. Even April 9^th of this year one day before elections they attacked and killed 10 military personal in a remote area of the country.

Sorry to bore you with all the details but the history of the Shinning Path is important to the history of Peru. In 1990, with the government falling apart, a poll was taken and over 80% of the people supported the SL. Today although the SL is gone there is still a deep mistrust of the government by the people. Ask anyone on the street what they think of the government and you will always get a negative response. Voting is mandatory and around 15% of people spoil their vote in protest of the government. On Sunday June 5^th there is a runoff election here for President of Peru. Please pray for peace and for God’s will to be done here.

I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people- for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quite lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 1 Timothy 2:1-4