From 1880 to 1912 most of the world’s rubber came from the Iquitos region of Peru.  European immigrants and speculators amassed fortunes. The wealth did not trickle down to the indigenous peoples of Iquitos.  Pressed into service as rubber collectors, they were killed en masse by smallpox, diptheria, yellow fever and overwork.  Today the mansions of Iquitos are a popular Peruvian tourist destination. The tour companies have been forced to import Indians from Brazil and Colombia, as the tribes of Iquitos are all gone now.  37% of Peru’s population lives below the official poverty line: in the rural areas this figure is closer to 75%. Most of these people are Indians and Mestizos, people whose lives have been on a downward spiral ever since Pizarro showed up.  Out of this cauldron came Sendero Luminoso, the Maoist “Shining Path” guerillas responsible for a 17-year war within Peru.

In 1980 Dr. Rubén Abimael Guzman Reynoso, better known by his nom de guerre of “Chairman Gonzalo,” declared a People’s War against the government of Peru.  Inspired by the Cultural Revolution during his visits to China, Sendero Luminoso began a protracted campaign of struggle in an effort to “surround the cities from the countryside.” In the remote Andes mountains, SL guerillas launched attacks throughout Peru. While the SL leaders were typically Mestizo college students, they learned to speak Quecha and presented their Maoist utopia as a rebirth of the Inca Empire.  El Presidente Gonzalo soon attained a near-mythic status; even today SL documents praise him as the “greatest living embodiment of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” and describe his “steely and unflinching Gonzalo Thought resolve” in terms more often found in bodice-rippers.  Throughout the 1980s Sendero Luminoso base camps sprung up throughout Peru, as did assaults on military and civilian targets.  A country which was already facing 7,000% inflation found itself rocked by a terrorist uprising.  The Fujimori government responded brutally, trampling civil rights and engaging in its own dirty war.  By the time Guzman was captured in 1992, some 27,000 people had died and some $30 billion in property had been destroyed. 

After Guzman’s arrest no comparable leader arose from the ranks; today some estimate that Sendero Luminoso has no more than 200 remaining members.  Even their rural support has eroded; Sendero Luminoso soldiers killed many civilians whom they labeled “revisionists” or “collaborators,” and their “revolutionary taxes” to support their cause were no more popular than taxes usually are.  Today Guzman sits in a maximum security prison off Chile’s coast; only seven other people are lodged there, including Carlos Montesinos, the Security Minister who captured him and who was later charged with bribery and treason.  (Guzman lodged a formal complaint, claiming Montesinos was a common criminal and didn’t deserve to be lodged in a military prison). 

Sendero Luminoso called for widespread boycotts in the recent elections (they see elections as a sham perpetrated by the ruling class, and prefer violence to ballots) but were unable to disrupt the proceedings.  While Sendero Luminoso pockets remain active in rural Peru (and have been implicated in cocaine trafficking there and in Colombia and Ecuador), it appears that their glory days have passed.  Still, it would be foolish to count Sendero Luminoso out just yet.  The widespread inequities which led to Guzman’s rise still exist, as do thinkers influenced by Sendero Luminoso and the Marxist-Leninist Tupac Amaru movement.  Should the financial crisis in Argentina lead to a domino effect, we could very well see a repeat of the 1980s bloodshed.