Terrorism in Perú

Amigos:

Terrorism in my country has long been known by now; since the early 80's Sendero Luminoso (or Shinning Path) appeard in Ayacucho (high sierras) impossing violence on the poor villagers of a very underdeveloped region; President Gonzalo, as they called their leader Abimael Guzmán Reynoso, a philosofy proffesor at a local university with a strong and radical personality led his troops to killing local authorities, kidnapping young peasants to form their own forces and pleading maoist policies (they were assumed to be cattle robbers by the government for some 2-3 years); as their number increased they expanded slowly at first but by the end of the 80's they had a somewhat considerable "army"; they roamed many regions of our sierras and our police forces were designed, initially, to war against them but, the poor trainning and logistics of our police forces led to the expansion of this terrorist and bloody legion; initially making "war" in the sierras at first they expanded to the outskirts of Lima, the capital city of Perú, by the end of the decade.

It was very common those days to suffer many car bombings and 2 or 3 blackouts per week on some large cities caused by the destruction of endless energy transmission towers. By 1987 the peruvian armed forces (specially the Army and Marine Forces) took control of many large towns and cities but they did it when Sendero Luminoso had already got a psicological advantage (not real). Urban citizens felt Sendero was much stronger than it really was (small "cells" of 10 to 12 men attacked a given town and then flew fast enough to another town some 40 or 60 miles away, creating the idea they were a much larger force), and that they had the lead and the armed forces were only reacting of whatever Sendero did.

Our armed forces then trained local citizens of many rural areas (they knew better than no one else their territory) on self-defense and war tactics against Sendero (that was a key factor later to the defeat of this radical maoist group). There were many cruel fightings with many people from both sides killed (because Sendero Luminoso fighters never used any kind of distinctive uniforms, they mimetized as local civilians and that caused many missunderstandings, later called as "genocides" by their own corp of lawyers, disregarding their own senselness killing thousands of innocent county people.

Finally, as a result of an incredible good job done by the peruvian intelligence corps, in September 1992, President Gonzalo was captured in Lima by our police forces(living on a typical middle class house) without firing no shots at all and put into prision at the Naval Base, located in El Callao port city, where he is until now. Some minor Sendero Luminoso "cells" are still present in two very clear and defined locations inside of our country, and many or their fighters have "blended" with large drug traffiquers and they occasionally appear at small towns (see the map ahead) just to justify their presence but doing only small or none damages at all; obviously, this regions are forbidden for any foreigners to visit while in our country.


But there was another terrorist group (more on the guerrilla action type) called MRTA (Tùpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement) operating also during those years. They used violent attacks against the police and armed forces, bombings to terrorize civilians and kidnapps of important entrepeneurs as a way of finance their military needs. They used to "make justice" on behave of the "abused" workers of many enterprises taking the lives of managers and directors alike. We can vividly remember that 2 or 3 Kentucky Fired Chicken restaurants in Lima were attacked and burned down by MRTA (forcing first their customers to abandon the place, because "they were only against the imperialist owners"). In 1994 the last MRTA "cell" was killed by a select grup of combined armed forces members in a memorable operation known as "Operación Chavín de Huantar" after MRTA fighters captured more than 70 local civilian and military authorities during a big celebration at the Japanese Embassador Residence in Lima some 4 months earlier. MRTA doesn't have any visible remanents nowadays.